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Why Bungee Jump When Wine Awaits?

Chard Farm winery on New Zealand's South Island.Credit
Brendon O'Hagan for The New York Times

There is something incongruous about sipping a well-structured, deeply aromatic pinot noir at a beautiful winery while watching people fling themselves off a bridge, even if they are attached by a bungee cord. But in the Central Otago region on New Zealand’s South Island, adrenaline-fueled adventure sports and leisurely visits to photogenic vineyards are equally popular options.

My wife and I were taking advantage of the region as a restful break between multiday hikes through the Fiordland National Park, but we decided to eschew the madness of the river-bound plunge in favor of the safety of a wine tour. I’m happy to say we made the right choice: We hadn’t planned our trip, a three-month excursion that served as a delayed honeymoon, with a wine theme in mind, but the pure, relaxing joys of the 18 wineries we ended up visiting in Central Otago, one of the world’s southernmost wine-producing regions, became a wonderful discovery.

During our visit in the late New Zealand summer, about a month before this year’s grapes would be harvested, we started our tour at Chard Farm, a winery that sits in the high desert of the Gibbston Valley, overlooking the ice-blue waters of the fast-moving Kawarau River. We sipped a gewürztraminer — Rob Hay, Chard’s winemaker and owner, said he wasn’t a fan, but he grew it for his German wife, Gerdi — as we watched gutsy souls leap from the Kawarau Bridge, one of the world’s first bungee-jumping outposts.

There are three distinct subregions to sample in Central Otago. The Gibbston Valley, which sits between two mountain ranges, is higher (and cooler) than the two other appellations, Cromwell and Bannockburn, which lie 20 or so miles to the east. The Kawarau River flows through the valley in a deeply cut gorge and into Lake Dunstan, a man-made body of crystal green that divides the two towns.

On the South Island, sparsely populated compared with its northern sibling, even the major state highways twist up and around mountains, routinely narrowing to one-lane bridges. The road to Chard Farm climbed steeply off the highway, loose gravel hugging a vertiginous cliff face; there were no guardrails. It occurred to me that we might end up in the Kawarau River — and without a bungee. Happily, our guide, Jim Ashe, managed to navigate the slippery gravel. (We found Jim, who ferries tourists to his favorite wineries in a minivan, through a brochure at our hotel.)

The vineyards that open themselves to tourists and tastings vary widely in Central Otago. Mt. Difficulty, perhaps the most commercial of the lot, offered a restaurant that required reservations; busloads of tourists poured into it as their vehicles parked next to a helicopter landing pad out front. We opted to sit on swinging couches on its covered patio, looking out over Bannockburn in the valley below.

Next door, at Gate 20 Two, the tasting room — the cellar door, in Kiwi parlance — was much less formal. Pauline McKinlay, who runs the tiny vineyard with her husband, welcomed us into her foyer. (I could see his stocking feet reflected in a mirror as he sat on the couch, watching television.) Across the street, at Domain Road, the tasting experience consisted of two benches under the shade of a tree outside a restored gold miner’s cottage, where the winemaker Graeme Crosbie casually chatted with Jim while we tasted, Crosbie’s dog making figure-eights around our feet. Jim bought a bottle of Mr. Crosbie’s sauvignon blanc for his own dinner that evening.

All three vineyards sit on Felton Road, around Bannockburn, a row of purveyors who had some of the most delicious pinot we found. While Oregon or California pinots are light and hint at damp forest floors on the nose, Central Otago’s are known for exhibiting deep red fruit notes, and occasionally a bit of spice. The 2010 vintages from Mt. Difficulty and Gate 20 Two were the two best wines of the 300 or so I tasted in New Zealand.

Cromwell, home to most of the better-known wineries in the region, sits below an oddly terraced high desert landscape. The area first attracted miners looking for gold in the late 1890s; during their hunts, they leveled hills and mountains, creating artificial plateaus that still exist. Some of the wineries even use the old buildings the miners left behind. At GeorgeTown, a vineyard just outside Cromwell, the tasting room is a low-beamed structure no bigger than 200 square feet, built as part of a mining settlement a century ago. Taller sippers will have to hunch slightly to fit in a space where six or seven miners would have slept.

Lodging options today have improved, but not by a lot. In Queenstown, we spent several nights in the Sherwood, a 1950s-type motel with a charmingly campy medieval motif. In Cromwell, after four days in the backcountry, we could only find a Top 10 campground — a budget-friendly combination campsite, motel and collection of cabins. (A Pat Benatar concert had sold out every other room in town.)

Photo

Chard Farm winery.Credit
Brendon O'Hagan for The New York Times

But we were in Central Otago to do more than sleep. On our second day in Cromwell and Bannockburn, this time without Jim’s assistance, we again found the contrasts that make the region attractive to both the casual tourist and the most obsessed oenophile. A dusty road along the shores of Lake Dunstan leads to Carrick, one of New Zealand’s larger producers. Here, we had a typical New Zealand vineyard lunch, the tasting platter: stuffed olives, chorizo, roasted cherries, local green-lipped mussels and cheeses were on virtually every vineyard menu we encountered.

There are exceptions. At Wild Earth, a vineyard that sits atop the Kawarau River Gorge, Quintin Quider, the owner, smokes meals in repurposed pinot noir barrels, over manuka chips, and serves sauces in shiny blue and green paua shells. At Amisfield, a well-regarded bistro attached to one of the better-known wineries in the region, just a short hop from Queenstown at the base of the Remarkables (a mountain range popular with skiers), we tasted a tongue-tickling sauvignon blanc jelly, while children played in a bocce court near our table.

Maps available at most area hotels and wineries will guide tourists to the vineyards open for tasting. But vineyards must pay a fee to be included, so before stopping at Amisfield, we made a point of visiting two smaller wineries that haven’t incurred the expense. The first, Mt. Rosa, is a former sheepshearing station; visitors will find a wine barrel full of wool to play with as they sip wines just as soft. Across the road at Brennan, the second smaller vineyard, we met an expat from Wisconsin who shared one of the vineyard’s rare dessert wines, the sweet Noble Sauvignon, of which only 200 liters are produced every year.

During one of our last stops in Bannockburn, at Bannock Brae winery, we met Crawford Brown, a genteel, mustachioed man who had retired to the vineyard after a career as a beer brewer in the nearby city of Dunedin. His wine has been called New Zealand’s best value by Michael Cooper, the Kiwi version of the American wine critic Robert Parker. We joined a young, newly married couple from India and their tour guide on Mr. Brown’s patio, overlooking the perfectly trimmed grass sloping away to the vineyard, the green grapevines contrasting with the arid mountains in the distance.

Mt. Difficulty, 73 Felton Road, Bannockburn; 64-3-445-3445; mtdifficulty.co.nz; 1 to 2 New Zealand dollars, about 85 cents to $2.70 at 1.17 N.Z. dollars to the U.S. dollar. Reservations recommended for lunch at the restaurant.